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The Gresham College group was a loose collection of scientists in England of the 1640s and 1650s, a precursor to the Royal Society of London. Within a few years of the granting of a charter to the Royal Society in 1662, its earlier history was being written and its roots contested. There is still some debate about the effect of other groups on the way the Royal Society came into being. The composition of those other groups is unclear in parts; and the overall historiography of the early Royal Society is still often regarded as problematic. But the group centred on Gresham College has always been seen as fundamental to the course of events. Both the location and the staff of London's Gresham College, a foundation outside the old universities at which lectures were given for the general public, played significant roles in the events leading up to the charter given to the Royal Society. More accurately, there were at least four identifiable successive groups of virtuosi (as they would have been called at the time), natural philosophers and physicians, in London and Oxford, in the period from the outbreak of the First English Civil War to the English Restoration of 1660. Of those, two were based at Gresham College: the so-called 1645 group concerned with experimental science; and the 1660 committee of 12 who steered the early days in which the Royal Society was formed, i.e. in the period October 1660 to 1662. According to a history of the College: the scientific network which centred on Gresham College played a crucial part in the meetings which led to the formation of the Royal Society.〔http://www.gresham.ac.uk/greshamftp/historygreshm_bk2.pdf, p. 38 of PDF〕 The traditional account, represented by the Royal Society's handbook from a century ago,〔https://archive.org/stream/cu31924012190868#page/n17/mode/2up〕 which took at face value some of Thomas Sprat and John Wallis's statements about the pre-history, is more cut-and-dried than current views about the central role of the "Gresham College group". Sprat's ''History of the Royal Society'' (1667) is now generally considered a work of apologetics rather than reliable history; and Wallis was writing much later, with his own agenda. But with some nuances, the outline of the events connected with Gresham College remains much the same. ==Gresham College group of 1645== Meetings at Jonathan Goddard's lodgings which were in Wood Street, or Cheapside, may have preceded the 1645 Gresham College gatherings, or may have been concurrent; an account of John Wallis asserts there was a group convened by Theodore Haak. This group is now often called simply the “1645 group”.〔For example in the ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', articles on Ent, Goddard, Glisson and "Scarburgh, Sir Charles".〕 George Ent, Francis Glisson and Charles Scarborough joined around 1647. Wallis mentions also John Wilkins, Samuel Foster and Christopher Merret.〔(Wallis Project page, ''Pro vita sua'' ).〕 The group broke up around 1648. There are in fact two accounts by Wallis, the first from 1678,〔(Wallis Project page, ''Defence of the Royal Society'' ).〕 and the second (unpublished at the time) from 1697.〔 The first version (''A Defence of the Royal Society'') was produced to contradict William Holder, with whom Wallis was in dispute over his work in speech therapy. The second version was published in 1725 by Thomas Hearne, in front matter to his edition of the chronicle of Peter Langtoft; from where in 1756 Thomas Birch picked it up as an authority on the origins of the Royal Society, and argued against Sprat's history as superficial on its formation.〔Purver, pp. 161–4.〕 Some doubts have been cast on Wallis's accounts as authoritative. Haak was an associate of Wallis through the religious activities of the Westminster Assembly; it has been questioned whether his role was a central as Wallis suggested. On the other hand Haak had other associations (with Marin Mersenne; with John Pell and Gabriel Plattes of the Hartlib Circle).〔http://www.compilerpress.ca/Competitiveness/Anno/Anno%20Johnson%20Gresham.htm〕 Margery Purver has argued that Sprat's ''History'' is more reliable for the purposes of the Royal Society, their reading of Francis Bacon's thought, and the intention to develop science according to a taxonomic approach. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Gresham College and the formation of the Royal Society」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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